average weight.Oh, maybe a little something in the mouth, after all, that thin, broad upper lip, and maybe, also, a certain boyishness ofchin.And the shoulders.
“I still think ofmyselfas having blonde hair,”Kate says.“Though I haven’t since I was ten years old.But it was such a part ofmy identity, and such a part ofmy parents’celebration ofme.The picture ofmyselfthat I carry within me will always be ofsome pink little girl with white-blonde hair.Oh my God, how my parents suffered when my hair went dark.”
“It’s not just the coloring,”says Sidlowski.Whatever tact he had when first pointing the saint out to Kate is falling away now.His voice is eager, insistent.“It’s the face, the shape ofthe head, and something else, some-thing ineffable.”
“I don’t really see it,”Kate says apologetically.“But thank you, I guess.
I don’t relate to saints, Father.I don’t really believe in them.”
“But it’s a matter ofhistorical record.And this is her birthday month.
She was born October6.October6was the day ofthe storm,”Sidlowski says.“It made me think ofher.”
“Why is that?”Kate is uneasy with any mention ofthat unexpected, chaos-inducing snow.The storm has come to mean two things to her:her narrow escape from the roaming Star ofBethlehem boys, and Daniel spending the night with Iris, a night that, the more she thinks about it, al-most certainly became the occasion for Daniel’s long desire to finally find consummation.Kate cannot see a broken tree—and there are still thou-sands inWindsor County— without pain in her chest.
“Are you all right?”Father Sidlowski asks.
“Tell me about her,”Kate says, gesturing toward the painting.“What’s wrong with her hands?Why is she bleeding?”
“She was called Mary Frances ofthe FiveWounds.”He waits to see if Kate understands those wounds refer to the five stabs ofthe Roman spears in Jesus’crucified body.“She had a very difficult life.Even after she joined an order, her father, who detested her, and, ifyou ask me, har-bored and perhaps even acted upon incestuous feelings toward her, in-sisted she continue to live in his house as a servant.When Mary Frances’s father was done with her, he passed her along to a local priest, a fanatic in the Jansenist tradition, who continued Mary’s ill treatment.She re-mained the priest’s personal servant for the rest ofher life, thirty-eight more years.Yet even in the midst ofher degradation, Mary insisted on caring for others.She practiced regular personal mortifications, many of them quite painful, asking God to place in her own soul the suffering ofall those trapped in Purgatory, and asking, as well, to share the pain of her sick neighbors, most ofwhom treated her with contempt.”
He looks at Kate, sees her pained expression, and lowers his voice, almost to a murmur.
“You said you were going from church to church.Would you mind my asking why?”
“I’m being treated with contempt, too, Father,”Kate says.She steps toward him.The floor is soft, it seems as ifher feet are sinking in through the wood.A sudden dizziness, the world spins, once, twice.
Daniel is wracked with jealousy now that it is the weekend and Hamp-ton is home.He suspects that there is no one in the world who would sympathize with his agony, not even Iris.And what puts him even further from sympathy’s comforting embrace is that he is harming other people.
He is lying to Kate, though he tells himself that he would tell her the truth and take the necessary steps to separate their lives ifonly he hadn’t promised Iris not to make any precipitous moves.The fact is that Iris’s swearing him to silence fits in with his own reluctance to say the terrible thing to Kate.He is betraying Hampton, who is not really a friend or a man toward whom Daniel has ever had warm feelings, but who is, at least, a fellow human being, and worthy ofrespect and decent treat-ment.And he is betraying Iris—he has slept with Kate as a way ofkeep-ing a modicum ofdomestic peace, simply a matter ofslapping up some wallpaper to cover the cracks in the plaster.
His only comfort is theWindsor Bistro, which he discovered a couple ofweeks ago quite by accident.Before the storm, theWindsor Bistro seemed well on its way to being a losing proposition, a small, pleasant place, with a little gas fireplace and a Colonial chandelier, but there were never more than six or eight people eating at the same time.The owner and cook, Doris Snyder, a shy, frugal woman with a starburst birthmark on her forehead, stocked as little fresh food as possible, afraid, as she was, that most ofit would end up in the garbage.By the time ofthe Oc- tober snow, theWindsor Bistro was beginning to have that doomed air of a fighter looking for a place to fall.But then the storm hit, and the Bistro was the first place in Leyden to reopen, and anyone who was brave or restless enough to leave home gathered there for companionship.Doris’s confidence grew each time the door opened, and soon she was greeting everyone personally, serving free drinks and complimentary desserts.
After a couple ofnights, she convinced her boyfriend, a mentally unsta-ble but handsome man named Curtis, who had not left their house in six months, to bring his guitar in and sing his repertoire ofNeilYoung, Jim Croce, and Jackson Browne songs.
Daniel has become a regular.The place is crowded tonight and it is only his position as one ofthe original, favored customers that allows him to oc-cupy a table all to himself.The owner’s boyfriend has not come in;his place on the stool to the side ofthe bar is taken by an old grade-school friend of Daniel’s, a bushy-browed man named Chris Kiley, who accompanies him-selfon a littleYamaha keyboard while he sings sultry rhythm and blues songs about marital chaos, such as“Me and Mrs.Jones”and“Who’s Mak-ing Love toYour Old Lady (WhileYou’re Out Making Love).”These songs feel like anthems in the confines ofthe Bistro, which, aside from being the only place in Leyden open past midnight, seems to have become a refuge for people whose deepest impulses have brought them into conflict with what society expects ofthem.There at the bar sits the principal ofthe high school with the new second-grade teacher fresh from college in Colorado.
There at the table next to Daniel’s sits Clive Mason, whose wife is dying of breast cancer, with his arm around Mary Gallagher, whose husband is a state patrolman serving three years in prison for grand larceny.And now they are joined by Ethan Cohen, who owns a women’s clothing shop next to the GeorgeWashington Inn, and Shane Chilowitcz, who teaches per-formance art over at the college, where he lives with his Polish wife, who is at home minding their six children.
The singer sways behind his keyboard, surrounded by customers, who are also swaying to the music—a few are singing along.It has be-come even more crowded around the bar.There are people standing three deep, talking, laughing with piercing animation, signaling the newly hired bartender for drinks.
Standing near the bar is Mercy, Ruby’s baby-sitter.She is dressed to look older than her age—plenty ofmakeup, a tailored brown jacket over a black scoop-necked blouse, ironed jeans, heels.She looks like one of the young women at the bank—sobriety and trustworthiness mixed with a kind ofsingles-bar brassiness.She has been trying to get Daniel’s attention, and now that he has finally seen her she smiles and walks over to his table.
“Hello, Mr.Emerson,”she says.She has put so much color on her lashes it seems a struggle to keep her eyes open.She holds a glass ofbeer with a thin slice oflime floating in its amber.
“Hello, Mercy,”he says.He almost asks,
She takes his smile as an invitation to sit.She arranges herselfcarefully in the bentwood chair, as ifshe were taking her place on a jury.The rim ofher glass is faintly red from her lipstick.“I’ve been thinking about that stuffyou told me,”she says.Her voice drops to a whisper.“About becoming an emancipated minor?”
“It’s a big step, Mercy.It’s basically a desperation move.”
“I really have to get out ofthere,”she replies, and as she says it the man with whom she arrived at the Bistro strides from the bar to Daniel’s table.He is more than twice her age.His name is Sam Holland, he is one ofthe area’s writers, not the most celebrated but possibly the richest, and he is someone Daniel knows.A couple ofyears ago, just when Daniel, Kate, and Ruby were moving back to Leyden, Holland’s teenage son had gotten himself into a lot oftrouble, and Sam had talked to Daniel about handling the kid’s defense.
Whatever chagrin Sam might feel about being away from his wife, or from being seen with a girl two years younger than his son, is nowhere in evidence as he thrusts his hand out and grasps Daniel with a manly grip.
